Sucks Smaug's Wyvern ass.
I went to see it tonight. As I write this the film is not even a quarter of the way through yet. I enjoyed the first two films which I saw in the 2D standard format. The visual style of the 3D high frame rate, as stated above. I will as briefly as I can describe why.
The 3D aspect: Its basically a multiplane effect. Disney invented this for their animated films in the early 20th century to give their features a bit more suimulated depth. It worked very well. Video games emplyed this tactic during the transition from 8 bit to 16 bit systems. It also worked well. In the case of this film it looks likes a bunch of 2D live cells sliding over each other. When an object breaks across all the planes (Bard's first arrow shot) to look like it moves towards or away from you it looks completely ill fitting.
High framerate: This brought all the action into super high definition all the time. Human eyes don't actually see moving objects, especially fast moving objects that clearly. Lucasfilm developed a method for stop motion animation that was dubbed "Go Motion" to create a more natural look. They just nudged the object being filmed just a bit on each frame take to blur the image slightly. The high rate makes fight action a bit more clear but adds too much to the rest. I have seen high frame rate 2D versions of the prior films and they are fine.
So the irony is that all the tech and effort that went into this presentation to make it look more real and immersive actually makes it look super fake.
My first comment about it while watching it was, "This looks like a video game." It would be cool if it was. After five minutes I walked out. This is the first time I ever walked out on a film. My disbelief could not be suspended because the visual storm caused my flight of fancy to be canceled before it even boarded at the terminal.
If you go to see this movie, choose 2D. Frame rate is optional.
Oh and Smaug has two hind legs and two wings as fore limbs instead of the four legged and two winged dragon as Tolkien himself originally drew for the book. So the movie Smaug is a wyvern.
Getting off my soapbox now.
